1797

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February 14: A British fleet under the command of Admiral Jervis defeats a larger Spanish fleet at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Captain Horatio Nelson distinguishes himself by seizing four Spanish ships; he is promoted to Rear Admiral and is knighted. Jervis is granted an earldom.
February 18: The Spanish Governor of Trinidad peacefully surrenders the colony over to a British naval force.
March 2: The Bank of England issues the first £1 note.
March 4: John Adams becomes the second President of the United States.
April – June: Naval mutinies occur at Spithead and Nore over sailors’ pay and living conditions.
May 12: Napoleon conquers Venice, ending the city’s 1070 years of independence.
July 24: Horatio Nelson is wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, losing an arm.
October 11: The British Royal Navy defeats the fleet of the Batavian Republic off the coast of Holland at the Battle of Camperdown.
October 18: France and Austria sign peace treaty.
November 16: Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia dies and is succeeded by his grandson, Frederick William III.

January 15: London haberdasher John Hetherington leaves his shop in the Strand wearing England’s first silk top hat and attracting a crowd of spectators whose shoving causes police to arrest him. He is charged with disturbing the peace and wearing “a tall structure having a shining luster calculated to frighten timid people.” Within a month he is overwhelmed by orders for the silk hats.
March 2: Politician, writer, and antiquarian Horace Walpole dies at age 79.
July 9: British statesman, orator, and political theorist Edmund Burke dies at age 68.
September 10: Mary Wollstonecraft dies at age 38 after complications from the birth of her daughter, Mary.

January: The first edition of the French fashion magazine, Journal des Dames et des Modes is published in Paris.
March 2: English writer and politician Horace Walpole dies at age 79.
October: Samuel Coleridge composes the poem Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream.
November 1: Jane Austen‘s father writes to London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he is interested in seeing the manuscript of Jane’s recently-completed novel First Impressions (later re-titled Pride and Prejudice). Cadell declines.

Ditherington Flax Mill, in Shrewsbury, England, is completed, now the oldest iron-framed building in the world, and the “grandfather of skyscrapers”.
August 29: Painter Joseph Wright of Derby dies at age 62.

Joseph Haydn composes the music to Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, the tune of which also became the music to the German national anthem, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.
Ludwig van Beethoven completes Piano Sonata, Op. 7, in E-flat.
Joseph Haydn –completes String Quartets, Op. 76, “Erdödy Quartets”.